Switching between SATA drives

Let's say you wanted to SATA drives, one with Windoze, one with Linux.
Is there an easy way to switch between them without using kludgey boot
manager programs? Something like ROM Tec's harddrive switch, but for
SATA.

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 04:26:54 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

chrisv wrote in message
.. .

Let's say you wanted to SATA drives, one with Windoze,
one with Linux. Is there an easy way to switch between
them without using kludgey boot manager programs?
Something like ROM Tec's harddrive switch, but for SATA.

Most modern motherboard bios will allow you
to specify which physical drive to boot from.

That's not terribly friendly, though... You're constantly having to
break into the BIOS, whether to change the setting, or to just check
it if you're not sure what it is...

It would be cool if a BIOS could be written that, if it finds multiple
bootable HD's, would come up and ask "Which one do you want to boot?"

chrisv wrote in message
...
Rod Speed wrote
chrisv wrote

Let's say you wanted to SATA drives, one with Windoze,
one with Linux. Is there an easy way to switch between
them without using kludgey boot manager programs?
Something like ROM Tec's harddrive switch, but for SATA.

Most modern motherboard bios will allow you
to specify which physical drive to boot from.

That's not terribly friendly, though...

True. But you held your nose at the
friendly approach, a proper boot manager.

You're constantly having to break into the BIOS,

Enter the bios, anyway.

whether to change the setting, or to
just check it if you're not sure what it is...

Yes, and if you use a proper boot manager...

It would be cool if a BIOS could be written that,
if it finds multiple bootable HD's, would come
up and ask "Which one do you want to boot?"

No thanks, I usually upgrade a hard drive by doing a clean
reinstall on the new hard drive and leave the original drive
in the system for convenient copying of minor stuff like
digital certificates etc and normally leave the original in
the system for a while in fact the new drive dies a very
early death. The last thing I want to have to bother with
is to keep telling it which drive I want to boot off.

If I do want to be able to select which of the bootable
drives to boot off, I use a boot manager. Thats what
they are designed to do and can do other associated
stuff like hide the partitions that arent being booted
from when that is necessary with some OSs etc.

It makes no sense whatever to have the bios handle
the complexitys of multiple boot options with the
NT/2K/XP family of OSs with their drive signatures etc,
that should be done by a real boot manager instead.

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003 12:58:33 GMT, chrisv
wrote:

On Sat, 12 Jul 2003 04:26:54 +1000, "Rod Speed"
wrote:

chrisv wrote in message
. ..

Let's say you wanted to SATA drives, one with Windoze,
one with Linux. Is there an easy way to switch between
them without using kludgey boot manager programs?
Something like ROM Tec's harddrive switch, but for SATA.

Most modern motherboard bios will allow you
to specify which physical drive to boot from.

That's not terribly friendly, though... You're constantly having to
break into the BIOS, whether to change the setting, or to just check
it if you're not sure what it is...

It would be cool if a BIOS could be written that, if it finds multiple
bootable HD's, would come up and ask "Which one do you want to boot?"


Some Bios have the option to press F10 or F12 (I can't remember which
at the moment) that brings up a Bootable Devices menu allowing the
choice of which device to boot from. Very usefull at times